Sunday
4 March 2001
Korean workers hunting Daewoo boss protest outside Nice villa
NICE, France: Three South Korean trade union activists attempting to trace
the fugitive Daewoo boss on Saturday staged a protest outside a villa in
Nice, southern France, where the runaway businessman may have stayed.
The three form an arrest squad of Daewoo workers on a mission to find and
detain the group's founder, Kim Woo-Choong, who is alleged to have embezzled
billions of dollars before disappearing last year as the group collapsed
around him.
Hwang I Min, Yu Man Hyung and Park Jum Kyn stood outside the luxury villa
chanting "arrest and detain Kim Woo-Chong" and "return the stolen funds and
cancel the massive lay-offs" and throwing eggs at the house.
The Soleil company, a subsidiary of Daewoo France, is paying the villa's
bills, according to Verveine Angeli, a French trade unionist who is helping
the three men in their so-far fruitless search.
"This house is today declared the property of Daewoo workers," shouted the
three South Koreans outside the villa. "They can come here now if they feel
like it," they added.
With thousands of Daewoo workers thrown out of jobs since the collapse of
the group in July 1999 with $80 billion in debt, many are bitter at the slow
pace of the official investigation into Kim, who was once hailed as a key
architect of South Korea's economic miracle.
There have been reported sightings in Switzerland and Sudan and even of him
staying in the same hotel as former US president Bill Clinton when he was in
Vietnam last year.
Unions accuse Kim of stashing away 25 trillion won ($20 billion) in secret
funds to bribe officials and politicians.
Kim, 65, founded the Daewoo group in the 1960s, building up South Korea's
second largest conglomerate by taking on bankrupt state companies and
relentlessly expanding abroad on borrowed cash. The empire collapsed when he
could not repay his debts. (AFP)
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